Something he saw at SXSW last week must have impressed the guitarist, because he just tacked them onto six dates

With a terrific SXSW show in his rear-view mirror, Jack White has announced additional tour dates in North America via his website. And his guests on some of those dates come straight from the SXSW buzz bin: He’s invited Alabama Shakes, arguably the hottest rock band to have ridden the hype waves out of Austin, to join him. Though there are officially eight dates that feature both Jack and the Shakes (per Paste), two of those are festival dates — Gulf Shores’ Hangout Fest and George, Washington’s Sasquatch! Fest &#8212. Here’s hoping the six Jack White-headlining, Shakes-opening dates, which span about a week in May, impress the guitarist-turned-label-head enough to invite them to Europe with him. If not, they always have their own exhaustive album promo tour to worry about.

In case you haven’t been keeping up on what Mister White has been up to in the past few months to build buzz for solo disc Blunderbuss, we can remind you quickly: He’s released a first single, a B-side to that single, and a second single, and has made a boys-versus-girls appearance on SNL. The full record drops April 24 via Third Man/Columbia; as his camp has announced, however, American fans can pre-order the record on iTunes starting tonight at 12:01 a.m. ET (European fans can already put their money down). Tickets for his tour will go on sale this Wednesday, March 21 at 9 a.m. local time for those signed up for Jack White’s mailing list, and at 1 p.m. local time for the rest of us.

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